Upskilling Pathways in AEPRO

UP-AEPRO addresses the constant need and interest of adult education (AE) trainers and staff to learn more about European developments in adult education and other countries’ systems and innovation. In particular, the project contributes to deepening the knowledge and fostering the discussion about the recently launched European strategy in adult education, the Upskilling Pathways initiative (UP).

Aims and objectives of the project

UP-AEPRO aims at

Increasing the knowledge about the Upskilling Pathways initiative and other Lifelong Learning policies at the European level

Allowing the exchange of innovation across Europe on the Upskilling Pathways initiative related topics

Improving quality, professionalisation and capacity building of AE staff and providers

Supporting UP-AEPRO learners and partners to develop online learning and introduce ICT tools into their daily work

Increasing the intercultural skills of AE trainers and staff

Strengthening the cooperation with peers and policy-makers in their countries and in Europe

Improving the UP initiative implementation at different level by enabling AE trainers and staff (and the organisations for which they work) to be involved

Outcomes

AE organisations and providers will able to increase their advocacy skills and to feel empowered in being involved in the initiative’s implementation.

The project will also provide them with the opportunity of an enriching deepening and exchange about their organisations’ and members states’ practices on the three steps of the initiative.

Participants will thus increase their professionalisation as well as the quality of their offer.

Outputs

An online course on the Upskilling Pathways initiative, structured in four innovative modules (each on divided into from 3 to 5 learning sessions) on the following topics:

Policy overview and European Advocacy (IO1)

Skills assessment (IO2)

Tailored-made offer (IO3)

Validation and recognition (IO4)

Five peer learning sessions (IO5) organised by the learners themselves with the support of the UP-AEPRO partners

An advocacy toolkit (IO6)

The first two modules of the online course “Innovate, learn, share, act” are available online: enroll on ae.learning.eu-website!

Events

A transnational learning activity, involving AE organisations staff and participants in the online course, will take place in Brussels (Belgium), in September 2019.

A final conference is foreseen in Portugal in June 2020, aimed at presenting all the UP-APRO outputs to AE organisations and their staff, policy-makers, learners.

Innovate, learn, share, act

E-learning course on policy and practices for Upskilling Pathways

The online course “Innovate – Learn, Share, Act” aims at deepening the knowledge and fostering the discussion about the Upskilling Pathways initiative (UP) which is a European strategy in adult education. The course started in May and ended in November 2019, and took place ae-learning.eu learning platform. The recordings of the webinars, discussions and course materials are available on the moodle platform so you can still attend online.

Through this course you will

gain knowledge about the Upskilling Pathways initiative and other Lifelong Learning policies at the European level;

acquire new insights based on policy examples and practices from the European adult education sector;

improve your understanding on how to implement the Upskilling Pathways initiative at different levels.

Structure of the course and methodology:

The course is taking place on the AE-PRO learning platform. You can attend the whole course or individual sessions. The community aspect is one of the strongest elements of the course, so participants are invited to use the platform’s forum to exchange ideas, inputs and proposals.

Participant profile

How to enrol

There is no age limit, the study language is English, and the training is free of charge.

You can enrol in each module separately. Once you click on the module, first you have to log in or create your account (if you have not done it before). Then you can enrol as a student. After enrolling you will be able to see the full programme of the sessions included in the module. The website will guide you in the process.

Recognition of participants’ learning outcomes

For each session of each module, participants will receive a learning badge (14 in total). A final certificate is foreseen for participants who will miss maximum one session per module (around 70% of attendance).

Upskilling Pathways – how to go from practice to policy?

How to design a course based on what skills are relevant for learners lives? How can validation process help to break out from isolation? What are the future competence needs in the working life? During the spring 2020 UP-AEPRO-project will organise five live webinars to carry a bottom-up evaluation of the Upskilling Pathways initiative in the partner countries.

The webinars will evaluate how the Upskilling Pathways initiative is implemented in the UP-AEPRO-partner countries (Belgium, Finland, Iceland, Portugal, Sweden and the UK), and participants are invited to share their experiences in their own work context (country, organisation, project, daily work etc).

Who should attend?

The webinars are targeted at adult educators, course providers and policy makers who would like to deepen their understanding of the Upskilling Pathways initiative and get inspired by good practices on its three key steps.

There is no compulsory prior registration to the webinars, but we recommend you sign up the expression of interest form, so we can send you useful materials relating to webinar topics, and invite you to discuss with the other participants. E-mail addresses are not used for other purposes. Recordings of the webinars will be uploaded in our youtube channel afterwards.

Get involved and be part of a European community of adult educators! We invite all of you to actively participate with reflections and comments via our social media and by filling in our questionnaire which gives us feedback and recommendations for further implementation of the Upskilling Pathways initiative. What needs improvement in the implementation of Upskilling Pathways? What works well and supports your work?

Webinar schedule

1. Individual-centred approach to validation (18/02/2020)

In the first webinar Marlies Pfann from Women’s centre in the Netherlands presented a method focusing on a step-by-step validation process to empower women towards active participation in society and the labour market. The model presented is transferrable and highly effective as an outreach measure supporting inclusion. A total of 28 adult learning experts took part in the webinar.

The Citizens’ Curriculum is an innovative, holistic approach to empower people to get the language, maths, digital, civic, health and financial capabilities they need. The approach is based on what motivates adults to learn, through giving learners a voice in co-designing curriculum content and careful contextualization, ensuring that people are learning skills which are relevant to their lives and their work.

3. The value of validation of prior learning in working life (17.03.20)

The RARPA-process measures progress and achievement of students on non-accredited learning programmes in the UK. The majority of such courses are in the adult and community learning sector. The RARPA process has been an established part of the quality assurance of non-accredited learning in England for over 15 years, and was updated by Learning and Work Institute in 2017.

The webinar included an overview of the 6-step process and suggestions for practical implementation of RARPA, examples on how providers worked with the process and it might be adapted to use in different settings. In addition the webinar tackled the issue of quality assurance and similarities and differences between RARPA and other approaches.

4. Competences, administrative obstacles and working life (31.03.20)

A presentation on how Finland through the reform of the Vocational Training Act deals with future competence needs. The outset is the thought that as we cannot really predict the competences needed in the future, we are focusing on giving LLL skills to everyone. The second part of the presentation took a closer look at how the system tries to cope with adults that have low basic skills and at the same time are motivated and forwarded to secondary level vocational training, but lack the prerequisites to fully benefit from the training.

Guest speaker Erno Hyvönen focused on low skilled adults and how VET and tailor made offers can support this group towards entering the labour market. In this context VET has many target groups: young people, adults and people in working life who need upskilling or reskilling and the unemployed. Hyvönen is involved in Upskilling Pathways strategy work in Finland and he is an expert on flexible learning in VET.

Unfortunately due to the high number of participants and some technical issues, the recording of this session is not available.

5. Implementing Upskilling Pathways – frontiers in Portugal & Sweden

14 April 2020 11.00am – 12.00pm CEST

The webinar focuses on the role of non-formal adult education in implementing Upskilling Pathways basic skills strategy. Guest speakers Andreas Fejes (Sweden) and Dina Soeiro (Portugal) will share critical views on the current developments in their countries, and discuss next steps to advance education for low-skilled adults. EAEA’s Policy Officer Raffaela Kihrer will provide a short input on the 2019 country report’s results from the two countries.

Soeiro is professor at Coimbra Higher Education School – Polytechnic Institute of Coimbra. She lectures Adult Education and Educational Gerontology using an on-Service Learning approach. She also does applied research on non-formal adult education. Dina is an Executive Board Member of EAEA and a Board Member of APCEP – Associação Portuguesa para a Cultura e Educação Permanente.

The webinar has been introduced by Raffaela Kihrer, policy officer at EAEA, and moderated by August Nilsson (Glokala Folkhigh School).

Coordinator of the webinar: EPATV Portugal & Glokala Sweden

Partnership

The UP-AEPRO project consortium is composed of 6 partners from 6 different countries.